What I aim at in this book is little more than to give complete
reflection to those great figures in Literature which have so long
obsessed me. This poor reflection of them passes, as they pass,
image by image, eidolon by eidolon, in the flowing stream of my
own consciousness.
Most books of critical essays take upon themselves, in unpardonable
effrontery, to weigh and judge, from their own petty suburban
pedestal, the great Shadows they review. It is an insolence! How
should Professor This, or Doctor That, whose furthest experiences of
"dangerous living" have been squalid philanderings with their
neighbours' wives, bring an Ethical Synthesis to bear that shall put
Shakespeare and Hardy, Milton and Rabelais, into appropriate
niches?
Every critic has a right to his own Aesthetic Principles, to his own
Ethical Convictions; but when it comes to applying these, in
tiresome, pedantic agitation, to Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Lamb,
we must beg leave to cry off! What we want is not the formulating
of new Critical Standards, and the dragging in of the great masters
before our last miserable Theory of Art. What we want is an honest,
downright and quite _personal_ articulation, as to how these great
things in literature really hit us when they find us for the moment
natural and off our guard--when they find us as men and women,
and not as ethical gramaphones.
My own object in these sketches is not to convert the reader to
whatever "opinions" I may have formulated in the course of my
spiritual adventures; it is to divest myself of such "opinions," and in
pure, passionate humility to give myself up, absolutely and
completely, to the various visions and temperaments of these great
dead artists.
There is an absurd notion going about, among those half-educated
people who frequent Ethical Platforms, that Literary Criticism must
be "constructive." O that word "constructive"! How, in the name of
the mystery of genius, can criticism be anything else than an idolatry,
a worship, a metamorphosis, a love affair! The pathetic mistake
these people make is to fancy that the great artists only lived and
wrote in order to buttress up such poor wretches as these are upon
the particular little, thin, cardboard platform which is at present their
moral security and refuge.
No one has a right to be a critic whose mind cannot, with Protean
receptivity, take first one form and then another, as the great Spells,
one by one, are thrown and withdrawn.
Who wants to know what Professor So-and-so's view of Life may be?
We want to use Professor So-and-so as a Mirror, as a Medium, as a
Go-Between, as a Sensitive Plate, so that we may once more get the
thrill of contact with this or that dead Spirit. He must keep his
temperament, our Critic; his peculiar angle of receptivity, his
capacity for personal reaction. But it is the reaction of his own
natural nerves that we require, not the pallid, second-hand reaction
of his tedious, formulated opinions. Why cannot he see that, as a
natural man, physiologically, nervously, temperamentally,
pathologically _different_ from other men, he is an interesting
spectacle, as he comes under the influence first of one great artist
and then another, while as a silly, little, preaching school-master, he
is only a blot upon the world-mirror!
It is thus that I, moi qui vous parle, claim my humble and modest
role. If, in my reaction from Rabelais, for instance, I find myself
responding to his huge laughter at "love" and other things, and a
moment later, in my reaction from Thomas Hardy, feeling as if
"love" and the rest were the only important matters in the Universe;
this psychological variability, itself of interest as a curious human
phenomenon, has made it possible to get the "reflections," each
absolute in its way, of the two great artists as they advance and
recede.
If I had tried to dilute and prune and "correct" the one, so as to make
it "fit in" with the other, in some stiff, ethical theory of my own,
where would be the interest for the reader? Besides, who am I to
"improve" upon Rabelais?
It is because so many of us are so limited in our capacity for
"variable reaction" that there are so few good critics. But we are all,
I think, more multiple-souled than we care to admit. It is our foolish
pride of consistency, our absurd desire to be "constructive," that
makes us so dull. A critic need not necessarily approach the world
from the "pluralistic" angle; but there must be something of such
"pluralism" in his natural temper, or the writers he can respond to
will be very few!
Let it be quite plainly understood. It is impossible to respond to a
great genius halfway. It is a case of all or nothing. If you lack the
courage, or the variability, to _go all the way_ with very different
masters, and to let your constructive consistency take care of itself,
you may become, perhaps, an admirable moralist; you will never be
a clairvoyant critic. All this having been admitted, it still remains
that one has a right to draw out from the great writers one loves
certain universal aesthetic tests, with which to discriminate between
modern productions.
But even such tests are personal and relative. They are not to be
foisted on one's readers as anything "ex cathedra." One such test is
the test of what has been called "the grand style"--that grand style
against which, as Arnold says, the peculiar vulgarity of our race
beats in vain! I do not suppose I shall be accused of perverting my
devotion to the "grand style" into an academic "narrow way,"
through which I would force every writer I approach. Some most
winning and irresistible artists never come near it.
And yet--what a thing it is! And with what relief do we return to it,
after the "wallowings" and "rhapsodies," the agitations and
prostitutions, of those who have it not!
It is--one must recognize that--the thing, and the only thing, that, in
the long run, _appeals._ It is because of the absence of it that one
can read so few modern writers _twice!_ They have flexibility,
originality, cleverness, insight--but they lack _distinction_--they
fatally lack distinction.
And what are the elements, the qualities, that go to make up this
"grand style"?
Let me first approach the matter negatively. There are certain things
that _cannot_--because of something essentially ephemeral in
them--be dealt with in the grand style.
Such are, for instance, our modern controversies about the problem
of Sex. We may be Feminists or Anti-Feminists--what you will--and
we may be able to throw interesting light on these complicated
relations, but we cannot write of them, either in prose or poetry, in
the grand style, because the whole discussion is ephemeral; because,
with all its gravity, it is irrelevant to the things that ultimately
matter!
Such, to take another example, are our elaborate arguments about
the interpretation, ethical or otherwise, of Christian Doctrine. We
can be very entertaining, very moral, very eloquent, very subtle, in
this particular sphere; but we cannot deal with it in the "great style,"
because the permanent issues that really count lie out of reach of
such discussion and remain unaffected by it.
Let me make myself quite clear. Hector and Andromache can talk to
one another of their love, of their eternal parting, of their child, and
they can do this in the great style; but if they fell into dispute over
the particular sex conventions that existed in their age, they might be
attractive still, but they would not be uttering words in the "great
style."
Matthew Arnold may argue eloquently about the true modernistic
interpretation of the word "Elohim," and very cleverly and wittily
give his reasons for translating it "the Eternal" or "the Shining One";
but into what a different atmosphere we are immediately transported
when, in the midst of such discussion, the actual words of the
Psalmist return to our mind: "My soul is athirst for God--yea! even
for the living God! When shall I come to appear before the presence
of God?"
The test is always that of Permanence, and of immemorial human
association. It is, at bottom, nothing but human association that
makes the great style what it is. Things that have, for centuries upon
centuries, been associated with human pleasures, human sorrows,
and the great recurrent dramatic moments of our lives, can be
expressed in this style; and only such things. The great style is a sort
of organic, self-evolving work of art, to which the innumerable units
of the great human family have all put their hands. That is why so
large a portion of what is written in the great style is anonymous--like
Homer and much of the Bible and certain old ballads and songs.
It is for this reason that Walter Pater is right when he says that the
important thing in Religion is the Ceremony, the Litany, the Ritual,
the Liturgical Chants, and not the Creeds or the Commandments, or
discussion upon Creed or Commandment. Creeds change, Morality
changes, Mysticism changes, Philosophy changes--but the Word of
our God--the Word of Humanity--in gesture, in ritual, in the heart's
natural crying--abideth forever!
Why do the eloquent arguments of an ethical orator, explaining to us
our social duties, go a certain way and never go further, whereas we
have only to hear that long-drawn _Vox Humana,_ old as the
world--older certainly than any creed--"Santa Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro
nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae"--and we are
struck, disarmed, pierced to the marrow, smitten to the bone, shot
through, "Tutto tremente?" Because arguments and reasoning;
because morality and logic, are not of the nature of the "great style,"
while the cry--"save us from eternal death!"--addressed by the
passion and remorse and despair of our human heart to the
unhearing Universe, takes that great form as naturally as a man
breathes.
Why, of all the religious books in the world, have "the Psalms of
David," whether in Hebrew or Latin or English, touched men's souls
and melted and consoled them? They are not philosophical. They are
not logical. They are not argumentative. They are not moral. And
yet they break our hearts with their beauty and their appeal!
It is the same with certain well-known _words._ Is it understood, for
instance, why the word "Sword" is always poetical and in "the grand
style," while the word "Zeppelin" or "Submarine" or "Gatling gun"
or "Howitzer" can only be introduced by Free Versifiers, who let the
"grand style" go to the Devil? The word "Sword" like the word
"Plough," has gathered about it the human associations of
innumerable centuries, and it is impossible to utter it without feeling
something of their pressure and their strain. The very existence of
the "grand style" is a protest against any false views of "progress"
and "evolution." Man may alleviate his lot in a thousand directions;
he may build up one Utopia after another; but the grand style will
still remain; will remain as the ultimate expression of those aspects
of his life that _cannot change_--while he remains Man.
If there is any unity in these essays, it will be found in a blurred and
stammered attempt to indicate how far it may be possible, in spite of
the limitations of our ordinary nature, to live in the light of the
"grand style." I do not mean that we--the far-off worshippers of
these great ones--can live _as they thought and felt._ But I mean that
we can live in the atmosphere, the temper, the mood, the attitude
towards things, which "the grand style" they use evokes and sustains.
I want to make this clear. There are a certain number of solitary
spirits moving among us who have a way of troubling us by their
aloofness from our controversies, our disputes, our arguments, our
"great problems." We call them Epicures, Pagans, Heathen, Egoists,
Hedonists, and Virtuosos. And yet not one of these words exactly
fits them. What they are really doing is living in the atmosphere and
the temper of "the grand style"--and that is why they are so irritating
and provocative! To them the most important thing in the world is to
realize to the fullest limit of their consciousness what it means to be
born a Man. The actual drama of our mortal existence, reduced to
the simplest terms, is enough to occupy their consciousness and their
passion. In this sphere--in the sphere of the "inevitable things" of
human life--everything becomes to them a sacrament. Not a symbol--be
it noted--but a Sacrament! The food they eat; the wine they drink;
their waking and sleeping; the hesitancies and reluctances of their
devotions; the swift anger of their recoils and retreats; their long
loyalties; their savage reversions; their sudden "lashings out"; their
hate and their love and their affection; the simplicities of these
everlasting moods are in all of us--become, every one of them,
matters of sacramental efficiency. To regard each day, as it dawns,
as a "last day," and to make of its sunrise, of its noon, of its
sun-setting, a rhythmic antiphony to the eternal gods--this is to live in
the spirit of the "grand style." It has nothing to do with "right" or
"wrong." Saints may practise it, and sometimes do. Sinners often
practise it. The whole thing consists in growing vividly conscious of
those moods and events which are permanent and human, as
compared with those other moods and events which are transitory
and unimportant.
When a man or woman experiences desire, lust, hate, jealousy,
devotion, admiration, passion, they are victims of the eternal forces,
that can speak, if they will, in "the great style." When a man or
woman "argues" or "explains" or "moralizes" or "preaches," they are
the victims of accidental dust-storms, which rise from futility and
return to vanity. That is why Rhetoric, as Rhetoric, can never be in
the great style. That is why certain great revolutionary Anarchists,
those who have the genius to express in words their heroic defiance
of "the something rotten in Denmark," move us more, and assume a
grander outline, than the equally admirable, and possibly more
practical, arguments of the Scientific Socialists. It is the eternal
appeal we want, to what is basic and primitive and undying in our
tempestuous human nature!
The grand style announces and commands. It weeps and it pleads. It
utters oracles and it wrestles with angels. It never apologizes; it
never rationalizes; and it never explains. That is why the great
ineffable passages in the supreme masters take us by the throat and
strike us dumb. Deep calls unto deep in them, and our heart listens
and is silent. To do good scientific thinking in the cause of humanity
has its well-earned reward; but the gods throw incense on a different
temper. The "fine issues" that reach them, in their remoteness and
their disdain, are the "fine issues" of an antagonist worthy of their
own swift wrath, their own swift vengeance, and their own swift
love.
The ultimate drama of the world, a drama never-ending, lies
between the children of Zeus and the children of Prometheus;
between the hosts of Jehovah and the Sons of the Morning. God and
Lucifer still divide the stage, and in Homer, Shakespeare, Dante,
Milton, and Goethe the great style is never more the great style than
when it brings these eternal Antagonists face to face, and compels
them to cross swords. What matter if, in reality, they have their
kingdoms in the heart of man rather than the Empyrean or Tartarus?
The heart of man, in its unchangeable character, must ever remain
the true Coliseum of the world, where the only interesting, the only
dramatic, the only beautiful, the only classical things are born and
turned into music.
Beauty! That is what we all, even the grossest of us, in our heart of
hearts are seeking. Lust seeks it; Love creates it; the miracle of Faith
finds it--but nothing less, neither truth nor wisdom nor morality nor
knowledge, neither progress nor reaction, can quench the thirst we
feel.
Yes, it is Beauty we crave, and yet, how often, in the strain and
stress of life, it seems as though this strange impossible Presence,
rising thus, like that figure in the Picture, "beside the waters" of the
fate that carries us, were too remote, too high and translunar, to
afford us the aid we need. Heine tells us somewhere, how, driven by
the roar of street-fighting, into the calm cool galleries of the Louvre,
sick and exhausted in mind and body, he fell down at the feet of the
Goddess of Beauty there, standing, as she still stands, at the end of
that corridor of mute witnesses, and as he looked to her for help, he
knew that she could never bend down to him, or lift him up out of
his weariness, for they had broken her long ago, and _she had no
arms!_
Alas! It is true enough that there are moments, when, under the
pressure of the engines of fate, we can only salute her--the immortal
one--afar off. But if we have the courage, the obstinacy, the
endurance, to wait--even a short while longer--she will be near us
again; and the old magical spell, transforming the world, will thrill
through us like the breath of spring!
Why should we attempt to deceive ourselves? We cannot always
live with those liberating airs blowing upon our foreheads. We have
to bear the burden of the unillumined hours, even as our fathers
before us, and our children after us. Enough if we keep our souls so
prepared that when the touch, the glimpse, the word, the gesture,
that carries with it the thrilling revelation of the "grand manner",
returns to us in its appointed hour, it shall find us not unworthy of
our inheritance.